The march began a week of high tension between Israelis and Palestinians, highlighted by the embassy inauguration to be attended by a Washington delegation including US President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, both White House advisers.

They arrived in Israel on Sunday.

The embassy move will take place on the 70th anniversary of Israel’s founding, while the following day Palestinians will mark the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, commemorating the more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled in the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.

And Jerusalem premier league football club Beitar Jerusalem said it was renaming itself “Beitar Trump Jerusalem”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – bolstered in recent days by Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal – opened a special cabinet meeting at Jerusalem’s Bible Lands Museum by again lauding the embassy move.

He later spoke at a reception welcoming the US delegation.

“Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for the past 3,000 years,” Netanyahu said.

“It’s been the capital of our state for the past 70 years. It will remain our capital for all time.”

US Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, the head of the Washington delegation, called the embassy move “a long overdue recognition of reality.”

Police and the Israeli military planned major security deployments.

Around 1,000 police officers will be positioned around the US embassy and surrounding neighbourhoods for Monday’s inauguration, said spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Israel’s army said it would almost double the number of troops surrounding the Gaza Strip and in the occupied West Bank.

On Sunday, scuffles broke out between Israelis visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in east Jerusalem’s Old City, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, and Palestinian security officers.

Jordan, the custodian of the site, sent a letter of protest to Israel condemning this as a “provocation by extremists”, a spokesman said.

Jews are allowed to visit the site but not pray there to avoid provoking tensions and police said a number of visitors were removed for not following the rules.

“It is not a provocation. It’s our property,” said Nili Naoun, 42, an Israeli who arrived at the holy site with her family at 7.00am.

There were already tensions in the weeks before the embassy move.

Fifty-four Palestinians have been killed in protests and clashes since March 30 along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel.

No Israelis have been wounded and the military has faced criticism over the use of live fire.

Israel says it only opens fire when necessary to stop infiltrations, attacks and damage to the border fence, while accusing Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the blockaded Gaza Strip, of seeking to use the protests as cover to carry out violence.